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A Little Bit Grand, but Warm and Welcoming


Text: Joanne Kaufman
Photos: Sara Krulwich

… The house is decorated with confident and refined theatricality: custom-designed brocade-and-velvet sofas; a domed dining nook with a mosaic ceiling; a double-height library with a wrought-iron catwalk of gossamer delicacy … And it provides evidence both of a passport that has been stamped frequently and a conviction, borrowed from Tennyson, that “I am a part of all that I have seen.”

“And if it’s part of me, it’s part of my house and the way I live in it,” Mr. Solomon said.

A part of him, yes, and a reflection of him. “The house is a little bit grand, but it’s not meant to intimidate,” he said. “I want it to be warm and welcoming.”

… Untouched for years, the house redefined squalor. But it had also escaped unsympathetic modernizing. … When he moved in, he said, he was overwhelmed. “I thought, ‘What am I doing here?”

(To read the rest of the article, and to view the slide show, please visit the New York Times.)